New Meters

Published November 19th, 2008

There's going to be a big change in the way utility customers are billed in Ocala. Meter readers are being replaced by a new, high tech device.

For Ocala Resident Jenny McCloud it seemed an easy trade. when she received notice that her water and electric would be off today momentarily to install Ocala Electrics 20 million dollar automated meter infrastructure or AMI she was all for it.

Joe Noel with the city of Ocala says the cost savings will be operational....it's not something that will be seen on the customers bill, at least not initially.

â€œWe won't have meter readers that'll be coming to your house every month. We won't have any of those costs. The overhead for vehicles, fuel costs and that's what I was talking about as far as our operational savings.â€

Most of the meter readers will be out of a job.

And since the new meters were paid for with money from a bond, customers won't see an increase in their bills. That's enough alone to please Ocala resident Phyllis Ewers.

All Ocala electric customers will receive the upgrade and Noel says the new systems will identify water leaks and outages quicker than before.